Opinion: Shelter Decisions That Ignore School Stability Are Harming NYC’s Children – City Limits

“For children experiencing homelessness, school is often the most consistent and stabilizing environment available to them. Disrupting that stability, even temporarily, has immediate academic consequences and long-term developmental implications.”

Parent leaders in District 30 are raising urgent concerns about a proposed plan to convert the Royal Stay Hotel Family Shelter into a shelter for single adult men—a move that would displace approximately 80 families.

This is not an isolated case. Families at the CityView Inn Family Shelter were recently relocated under similar circumstances, forcing children to leave their schools and support systems midstream. As an Ed Warrior and member of the Family Homelessness Coalition, I have seen how these decisions unfold in practice. When housing and education systems operate without alignment, children absorb the consequences.

What we are witnessing is not simply system strain—it is a coordination failure, intensified by recent shelter closures, including the closure of the 30th Street Men’s Shelter. As capacity shifts within the single adult shelter system, those pressures are being absorbed elsewhere—often through decisions that displace families with children.

When shelter capacity changes, there is no consistent mechanism to account for school stability, no standard requiring interagency planning, and no safeguard to prevent educational disruption before decisions are finalized.

System shifts in one part of the shelter network should not result in instability for children in another. Yet that is exactly what is happening. Families with children are becoming the most readily displaced population.

The impact is measurable. More than 20 percent of children in shelter are already missing critical school time due to instability and frequent moves. Each disruption undermines the stability required for academic progress.

At the same time, as documented by the Advocates for Children of New York, more than 154,000 New York City students are experiencing homelessness. Under federal law, these students are entitled to school stability and continuity of education. Yet current shelter practices are not aligned with those obligations.

These relocations are also occurring without the infrastructure to support them. There is no dedicated funding stream to ensure transportation when students are moved across boroughs. There are no enforceable guarantees that children can remain in their schools of origin. And there is no standardized transition protocol to protect educational continuity when families are displaced.

If shelter conversions are being considered, school stability should be a required planning factor—not an afterthought. Which would include formal coordination with the Department of Education, impact assessments tied to student populations, and advance communication with affected families. 

These are not new ideas; they are basic components of cross-system governance. Instead, families are navigating abrupt relocations, managing new commutes, new schools, and new systems without the supports necessary to make those transitions successful.

Displacement, in this context, is not neutral, it is destabilizing. For children experiencing homelessness, school is often the most consistent and stabilizing environment available to them. Disrupting that stability, even temporarily, has immediate academic consequences and long-term developmental implications.

If New York City is serious about addressing family homelessness, it must stop treating children as the system’s pressure valve. Expanding shelter capacity for single adult men and supporting that population are necessary goals, but achieving those goals by displacing families with school-aged children reflects a misalignment of priorities. This is not simply a matter of operational strain. It is a matter of policy design.

What is needed is the commitment to use them.

Rhonda Jackson is a lived-experience community engagement consultant and a leader with the Family Action Board of the Family Homelessness Coalition.*

*Editor’s note: Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York, a member of the Family Homelessness Coalition, is among City Limits’ funders.